“I hate snakes.” You know what I’m talking about. This one simple line, and littering the first movie with snakes that Indy can react to, gives the audience a quality they can identify with and latch onto in the hero.

It also opened up opportunities, such as the scenes in Last Crusade where they show a young Indy falling into a train car full of snakes, illustrating where his phobia came from. Later, when Indy is making his way through a sewer full of rats, he makes a comment to the effect that his father wouldn’t have made it past the rats. Like father, like son. One hates rats, the other hates snakes.

It’s so simple. Some might say even shallow. But it is a character tic that is nonetheless endearing, and defines an inner part of an iconic character. Besides, it gives the storytellers an excuse to throw snakes into each story. And as the audience we may be suckers, but we never get tired of it.

What does your hero hate?

“When Hollywood isn’t busy cranking out sequels, it’s scouring Earth for stories and characters that will save them the hassle of coming up with their own.”

Further proof that properties favoring a home medium don’t do very well outside of the native environment. Of course, James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars don’t seem to have that problem.

You do the math. Forget mediums, it’s all about franchises.

u·nique
–adjective

6. the embodiment of unique characteristics; the only specimen of a given kind: The unique is also the improbable.

my·thol·o·gy
–noun, plural -gies.

1. a body of myths, as that of a particular people or that relating to a particular person: Greek mythology.

As a writer, you are a myth maker. To be profitable and artistic is to create myths that are unique in some way.

What about your characters or world is different or unusual?

“A short story is the only way to keep your early work manageable.”

“Once you’ve done a ton of short stories then you can graduate up to doing novels.”

My problem is… I just don’t have any interest in writing short stories. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I don’t have anything against them, I just find myself more invested in full stories.

Jane Espenson has an interesting post that gets to the heart of the matter.

“I recently read one of those collections of short stories. You know the kind, the “Best Short Stories of two thousand and whatever it is now” kind of thing. In the introduction, the editor talked about how she would have thought that short stories would be the increasing in popularity now, as we all lead fast lives with small amounts of leisure time. A short story for the subway ride, a short story before turning out the light to refresh for another hectic day… it seems to make sense. She was puzzled as to why this doesn’t seem to be happening, that novels still seem to be the preferred unit of prose-based fiction.

Well, I can tell her why. Start-up costs. You have to invest a lot of attention in the start of a short story. Who are these people? Are they firemen? What year is this? Hey, are we in China or something? Picking up a short story requires an investment in attention and care far beyond what reading the next chapter of a novel requires. There, we already know what we’re in for and we only have to worry about what our guy is going through next.”

That’s exactly it. I’ve got a pretty high reading comprehension, and I still sometimes find it difficult to get into a story at first. The ramping up process for the reader takes quite a bit of investment. The reader does all this hard work getting to know your characters, wrap their head around the premise and the plot, and then the story is over.

Something similar happens to me when I try to write a short story. I start laying out the ideas, the characters, and pretty soon I realize that it would make a great full novel. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to throw the ideas away when the short story is over. A good idea is worth going all the way?

We live in a world of one-off short stories, one-off novels, one-off films. There is nothing wrong with creating something disposable. If you want to create a story that is told once, and when it ends that world dissolves forever and you’re onto the next project — go right ahead. It’s your choice. BUT, if there’s any chance it could spawn a sequel, then you should worldbuild and hook-build with a series in mind.

What are the different types of series you can create? Here is a short list:

• Metaseries
• Limited Series
• Ongoing Series

As for keeping things manageable? Nowhere does it say that full stories have to be long. I’ve always called my works in progress ‘novels’ but at 120 page targets they are mere novellas. I have no desire to write the 500 or 1000 page epic. A story of that size could just as easily be broken into small chunks and made episodic. Short books are easier on the reader.

Short books, not short stories. And if you’re going to create a sequel, why not a series?

I recently found a post-nuke series called Deathlands. Is it good? I don’t know yet. I just received my copy of Deathlands #1 ‘Pilgrimage To Hell’ today. Maybe I’ll dissect it here when I’m finished. Something interesting is that GraphicAudio, the publisher, has a specific marketing strategy. There are seventy or so Deathlands books, and a large number of them are audiobook only. They state their target as long-distance commuters. I find this interesting as it’s not often that publishers have such a narrow target audience.

More important though, I like to go through everything within my genre to make sure that my ideas haven’t already been exploited by someone else. In most cases, they haven’t been. My configuration of setting and character elements has enough of its own identity that it won’t be confused with others. This is good, but it doesn’t make the fear go away. I have this paranoia that one of these days I’ll pick up a novel and read exactly the novel I was writing. This is mostly an irrational fear, but in some ways a healthy one. It’s good to know what’s out there.

Is anyone encroaching upon your ideas?

To me it is less a question of originality, and more one of differentiation in the marketplace. If your product is the same as everyone else’s on the market, you will be marginalized or forced to fight a price war — as price wars are the result of a market flooded with similar products. Without any differentiating features, companies have no choice but to slash the bottom line.

It’s not like writers on average are the highest paid members of society anyway, so on many fronts we (I say we, not our publishers) can’t afford to slash prices. This isn’t Wal-Mart, right?

Anyway, the questions here are:

• Who is your competition?
• Who are the top three companies publishing in your genre?
• How do those publishers market their books?
• What are the top three brands or Intellectual Properties in your genre? (If you write fantasy one of these is inevitably the Harry Potter I.P..)

How does your product fare against the competition? Have you done any market research lately?